Tel Aviv

The beach beside the military base in Bat Yam, where Katya grew up, is nearly deserted- it’s a little cold for most Israelis, I guess. We ate excellent seafood. I listened to Russian. The kid at the next table was talking longing loveytalk with his girlfriend. He must’ve been about 19, 20. Sunglasses on his head like a camp counselor. They finished and got up to leave, and he casually slings a Kalashnikov over his shoulder. Half of me is thinking, That’s a realistic looking water pistol!! The other half knows damn well it’s real as all hell. Katya and I gawk as this youth saunters away in his shorts, arm in arm with his girlfriend and his gun. I keep thinking how early American settlers probably had kids like this strolling around with firearms cause their new laws said they could, don’t want no injuns or no English strutting around like they own the place. Look where that got Americans. Katya’s aunt says they’re soldiers on leave, they have a special license to keep their gun with them, uniform or not. This way, if an Arab madman appears to gun down a bunch of students someone can take him out. Hard to argue with that- I don’t know what living in that kind of fear is like. But I sure don’t feel safe seeing a spotty kid that looks like he should be measuring children outside rollercoasters strolling around with a semi-automatic. That doesn’t feel like security. That feels like desperation. That feels a breath away from anarchy.
Sitting in the breeze in these quiet suburbs, normal sounds, construction, traffic, everyday life. But I’m in the middle of a tiny country that’s barely hanging on. It’s incredibly strange.
I guess the thing to do is just buy stuff.

* * *

so, Tel Aviv. The modern city. No cultural tour would is complete without a fuck-off vodka night at the Russian clubs. Throwing back sickly sweet vodka-redbulls at home before 11. We meet childhood buddy Igor on the corner and cab it downtown. Ksusha knows people, so we’re into the Rio for free. DJ’s blaring it, wannabe pornstars with white lace and angel wings gyrating slowly onstage. Mullet blue-eyed Russians with hazing vodka eyes gape as the little angels strip down to G-strings and fake titties, the place is filling up. Igor buying round after round, how to keep up, but it feels good. The club experience is to blast your mind with so much alcohol and screamingly loud music that self-conscious little whispers can’t be heard, and the Id can take over, grinding your hips, movin your lips in shouts that no-one hears, turning you into an animal machine in a smoky mating season, tuned into species propagation mode, all systems go go GO! Banging techno beats and sweating mess of bodies, rounds come and go down the hatch, you don’t even remember the cab ride between clubs, you don’t even remember where the shekels went. This is the unforgiving and not-so-blind mating ritual, biceps and tight shirts, tiny skirts and glossy labia-looking lipstick, sex pounds the blood like bass beats, all this and more, Friday night whores, we’re all made the same in the end, the same stuff, but it comes out in different ways. 5am, we’re home, don’t know how. Hitched a ride in some suped-up hotshot Honda blaring Eminem, seatbelts on, that’s for sure. Ears ringing, it’ll be the only reminder in the morning. Ringing ears and aching head. Answer the call next weekend again. Shaking tail-feathers. Squawk. SQUAAAAWK..